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Weldon nodded, produced the match, lighted it and held it to the extended pipe. Carew's eyes, drooped to the bowl, watched the bit of flame. "Do you call that a steady hand?" he asked then. "Man, you're ill, I tell you. Your face is hot and your hands are cold, and your nerves are worn to shoestrings, frayed shoestrings at that. If you keep on, you'll be down flatter than you like.
When the three began to put on their shoes and stockings, Eleanor, putting on her own, her skirt wet and drabbled about her ankles, heard Maurice and Johnny offering to tie Edith's shoestrings a task which Edith, with condescending giggles, permitted.
Of course some girls are used to working and can hurry, while others... don't even know how to tie their shoestrings or braid their hair properly when they first come.... My work is to dust the center on the first floor. It's easy, and if I didn't take lots of time to look at the pictures and palms and things while I am doing it I couldn't possibly make it last an hour.
She usually took out her shoestrings, not liking the trouble of tying them. A ruffle of fine lace fell around her throat, and the sleeves of her short-waisted dress were puffed at the shoulders. Her small white hands were folded in her lap, for she was idle; on the little finger of her left hand twinkled a brilliant garnet ring, set with diamonds.
The board was laden with wares. Trinkets, pencils, shoestrings, candies, tacks, neckties, socks. And from the front of the board hung a sign reading, "Jim's Store Stop and Shop." I remember this creature with a sudden excitement. I passed by and bought nothing. But after five days his face has caught up with me.
"Look a-here, Hester, how do you s'pose it feels to a man who's paid his own way since he was a boy, bought a farm with his own money an' run it, brought up his boys an' edyercated 'em how do ye s'pose it feels fur that man ter go ter his own son an' say: 'Please, sir, can't I have a nickel ter buy me a pair o' shoestrings? How do ye s'pose it feels?
She interrupted him to point out two children laden with wild flowers, trudging along the roadside. "See how adorably dirty and happy they are," she cried. "That little fellow has his shoestrings untied, and keeps tripping on them, he's so tired, but he's so crazy about the posies that he doesn't care. I wonder if he's taking them home to his mother."
"When, a year ago, thee was put to mind this store, and I, coming here to buy, made thy acquaintance," she said softly, "thee wore always so stern and sorrowful a look that my heart bled for thee. I knew that thee was unhappy. Is thee unhappy still?" MacLean tied the shoestrings with elaborate care; then rose from his knees, and stood looking down from his great height upon the Quaker maiden.
"She told me not to tell, too," said Miss Hazy; "but I don't know what we're goin' to say to Mrs. Schultz. She 'most sprained her back tryin' to see who it was, an' Mrs. Eichorn come over twicet pertendin'-like she wanted to borrow a corkscrew driver." "Tell 'em she was a newfangled agent," said Mrs. Wiggs, with unblushing mendacity "a' agent fer shoestrings."
Eunice had found that the plan of washing oily children, with all their clothes on, was much easier in theory than in practice. And such a task as it had been to get their dripping clothes off! Wet buttonholes refused to open, shoestrings knotted hopelessly, and everything stuck flabbily together.
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